This project is concerned with behavioral analyses of information transmission within the spinal somesthetic pathways. The subjects will be monkeys, and the approach is to obtain psychophysical thresholds before and after a variety of spinal lesions have been administered. The proposal focuses on two long-term experiments: (1) assessment of tactual discrimination capacities that survive the spinal lesions, with emphasis on component spatial and temporal cues that should be important for somesthetic coding, and (2) evaluation of the spinal pathways responsible for recovery of pain reactivity after spinothalamic cordotomy. Histological controls will be an important part of these studies. The tactile discrimination studies on monkeys will be supplemented with human psychophysical investigations, using similar stimulus manipulations, in the attempt to efficiently define interesting phenomena of spatio-temporal resolution on the skin. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE: Gould, W.R. and Vierck, C.J., Jr., Cues supporting recognition of the spatial orientation of tactile stimuli. Neurosc. Abst. 1976, 22, 936.